Women entrepreneurs come to me all the time and ask, “How do I find the time to create true thought leadership?” “How can I be more edgy, and write what I want?” “How do I find fresh ideas? I feel like the well has dried up.”
If these questions sound familiar, you have an energy problem. And that energy problem is hurting your creativity, your thought leadership, and your marketing.
The One Duality That Rules Them All
Have you heard of masculine and feminine energy?
It’s the most common way I hear energy described among women entrepreneurs, especially those in the spiritual and life coaching spaces.
It’s a terrible way to “brand” energy. Why? Because it smacks of gender essentialism — the outdated but powerful concept that there’s something essentially different between genders (“men are from Mars and women are from Venus!” 🙄). This reduces us to our biology and reinforces the gender binary — yuck.
We could have chosen any other binary to describe the duality of energy: night and day, winter and summer, orange and blue, mountain and valley. (Putting aside for a moment the fact that binary thinking has its flaws!) However you prefer to “brand” it, this duality is part of you. Keeping it in balance is critical for bringing forth your great leadership.
The Energy of BEING and the Energy of DOING
This idea is not new, but a “rebrand” of a concept that has been in Chinese culture for thousands of years: yin and yang. The idea that “the universe is governed by a cosmic duality, sets of two opposing and complementing principles or cosmic energies that can be observed in nature.” (Source)
I like the way my friend and former client Dr. Jordin Wiggins defines energetic duality: the energy of being and the energy of doing.
What is choking your thought leadership is this: you are spending way more time DOING (producing, taking action, building, performing) than BEING (receiving, connecting, restoring, resting).
That’s because in our world, DOING is prized more than being, and it’s abundantly clear in entrepreneurship culture: Hustle. Grind. Sleep when you’re dead. Pull all-nighters. Productivity. Efficiency. Scale. Leverage. Which leads to… Burnout. Stress. Overwhelm. Anxiety. Comparison-itis. It might even be killing us.
In a patriarchal (actually, kyriarchal) culture, BEING — stillness, nurturing our ideas, taking our time — looks like “Doing nothing.” “Being lazy.” “Not working hard enough.”
We need BOTH energies to thrive in our lives, businesses, and marketing, especially if you’re an impact-driven woman entrepreneur. If you’re here to inspire and galvanize people through your leadership, over-performing on DOING will not get you there.
What Does BEING Look Like?
Think about how your schedule is set up. Are there equal parts devoted to DOING… and BEING? I know how DOING shows up in your schedule — responding to emails, burning through your to-do list, Pomodoro technique-ing. How does BEING show up?
How often do you take a walk? Meditate? Doodle? Do you create the space and the stillness you need to receive inspiration and ideas and let them flourish?
Think about how guilty you feel when you close your email and turn off your phone to drink a hot latte. Have a long talk with a friend. Nap. Go to an exercise class. Especially during “work hours.”
We are self-employed, yet the irony is that many of us chain ourselves to our desks from 9:00 to 5:00. Think about how anxious it makes you feel (to me it feels like my thoughts are hyperventilating!) when you see unfinished tasks in Asana, unopened emails in your inbox, or the pile of papers on your desk.
Even if we know, intellectually, that creative time, playful time, and restful time are as important as productive time, we’ve been conditioned emotionally to a hamster wheel. And it can be very challenging to our psyches to step off the wheel and allow ourselves to BE as much as we force ourselves to DO.
You must BE to receive your best marketing and business ideas. Great, unconventional ideas don’t come in 30 minute increments squeezed between client calls and attempting inbox zero. You can’t strong-arm your ideas into existence. Your most provocative, magnetic thought leadership ideas need stillness to flourish.
Then, of course you must take action. You must DO. Having ideas is beautiful, and giving ideas legs is how you make an impact. Trying to give ideas legs before they have germinated is how shitty, uninspired content happens. Listicles, regurgitation of best practices, and summaries can be forced. Inspiring, galvanizing, ideas with impact cannot.
Back to the questions that I hear all the time from my women entrepreneur clients: “How do I find the time to create true thought leadership?” “How can I be more edgy, and write what I want?” “How do I find fresh ideas? I feel like the well has dried up.”
The answers to these questions lie in stillness. Start BEING as much as DOING and you’ll find the answers to most, if not all, of these questions.
How is the balance between BEING and DOING for you? Let me know in a comment.
Special thanks to Amy Wright for edits. Featured image by Michał Parzuchowski
via Unsplash.
If you found value in this article, will you share it on social media? Use the swipe copy below:
LinkedIn:
If you’re running out of brilliant ideas, or worried about repeating yourself, what’s choking you up and holding you back is THIS imbalance. Bring it back to equilibrium for more creativity, inspiration, and impact: https://medusamediagroup.com/being/the-critical-imbalance-choking-your-thought-leadership/ by @Eva Jannotta #WomenWhoLead #WomenInBusiness #WomenEntrepreneurs #LeadingWomen #ThoughtLeaders #Creativity #Inspiration #EnergyTransformation
Twitter:
If you’re bored by your own ideas, or worried you’re repeating yourself, what’s choking you up and holding you back is THIS imbalance. Bring it back to equilibrium for more creativity, inspiration, and impact: https://medusamediagroup.com/being/the-critical-imbalance-choking-your-thought-leadership/ by @evajannotta #WomenEntrepreneurs
